Well, that was awful to watch. The writing was so bad that it made me dislike Brave and Ouja even more. Who is the writer for this? It's even worse than the main TV series.

I really enjoy Ouja from Ryuki. He's a terrible man. Repugnant. But in Ryuki, he was fun, despite all the terrible things he did. Since they didn't go into graphic details into his crimes, there was some fun escapism in his sociopathy. Here, he's a monster, and the violence is joyless. This is some rough shit! There's blood, we see him breaking a woman's arms with his rod. I never advocate censorship, but this feels so tonally inappropriate.

Hiiro's back to being an ass again. This is what made me hate him early on. And this stuff with his two nurses just makes him seem like an even bigger jerk, because now they give excuses for him to be a jerk. God, it was so frustrating to watch this. They don't even give him a character arc. We don't see any insight or reflection or character moments. He just shows up, ex machina style, and it's totally unearned. The character of Hiiro that is portrayed in this special and in early Ex-Aid would not have showed up. So why is he there? Give me a reason besides "He's the title character and it's time for him to fight the bad guy."

The other Riders were superfluous. Beast isn't even an evil Rider. Dumb dumb dumb.

Probably won't set up a voting system, but this was a 1 out of 5. Ugly, frustrating, joyless. Sorta seems like women torture porn? No one is cool or fun in this special. You brought back Ouja and you wasted his potential. You made Brave the main character and he was barely a protagonist. Sometimes doing a bad job at something is worse than doing nothing at all.

Mr. Writer(s) we need to have a talk about your attitude towards women.

Hiiro's behavior is downright shitty towards these nurses who do a shit ton of work for him without a word of complaint. The one mistake (blurry PET scans happen allllll the time, since people need to, y'know, breathe) isn't even their fault as it was likely due to the patient shifting about. They already said that they were going to redo the scan so what the hell is he complaining about? And I don't care how much of a genius you are, one second is not going to change anything. You've got a helluva god complex there Hiiro.

And then the women just excuse it?! "Oh he's a great doctor we have to be worthy of him." That's not how this works. He'd better try to be worthy of *your* support, not the other way around. Nurses aren't there just to look pretty, they have lots of stuff to do like the nitty-gritty of taking care of a patient. They go through just as much school and sometimes more than a doctor. Excusing Hiiro's behavior is a horrible example to set for children.

I don't think I've ever seen a KR episode more violent to anyone, not just women. It's downright horrifying at times. KR is not about violence for the sake of violence, if you want that, go watch a horror flick or something. It's about heroes and justice and this had none of that.

This had a horrible message. "Even if you're a dick to those around you if you helped them at one point in the past they're obliged to stay with you." Hiiro is horrible for doing it. The women are horrible for staying with him. And Emu and Asuna are horrible for just shrugging and going with it. This special made me lose respect for everyone in it.

I was really looking forward to seeing Asakura again cause he was such an unpredictable character in Ryuki but damn man, maybe you should've stayed out of it.

As much as I loved Takashi Hagino returning, the violence in this special is disheartening and scary, and a bit misogynistic to my taste. Whoever wrote this special is a class-act MRA on meth or some Negan fanboy.

Hiiro, one cannot be an asshat forever. Ren and Kaito Kumon were easily sociable to others even if they were jerks.

A departing Wrassler neighbor loved Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. While the show's stuntwork was impressive, I told him there are better KR series, with implications to broaden his horizons beyond Toei Tokusatsu.

HarryFA1 wrote:I can't believe they remembered Foundation X. What has it been, like 5 years since Megamax? I seriously hope this leads to something and they're not just thrown away for another 5 years.

I honestly, sort of expect this to happen.

Really, I don't expect Kuroto's gaming company to be the ONLY source of capital. He definitely had to have had initial funding for even implementing lofty goals, goals that are merely sub-plots and sub-tasks for what ultimately builds to well Foundation X (being of the most Kamen Rider context relating) even though Foundation X's involvement with Kamen Riders have been shelved after Fourze.

Better that than the minions in skeleton sight Halloween suits of Shocker. (from my perspective)

Hiro.... agreed on the end on how little reciprocating acknowledgement and professional support in return for their support. Scans also do not turn out pristine perfect the first pass, or even possibly the second. Hence why sometimes when sampling is done, enough is taken of the patient to do enough confirmations to perform a diagnosis for treatment. I can say the same thing applies for ANY industry that needs to do such activities (in computer science and science in general - data acqusition of enough sampling rates to determine fidelity of hypothesis) (Engineering, enough testing and simulation - both developmental and operational - to determine the ruggedness of the final product or build). Just ONE blurry image and he basically directly insults the nurse - who is not at fault and operating according to procedure?

While seeing the slasher imagery is somewhat of a breath of "freshness" in a series that has become light hearted, slashers were during a time when it was of the cultural norm to expect females shown in duress for the placement for conflict. Now, with the internet and the blurring of the gray lines of responsibility of conflict drive, many - would see this as paying disrespect to women. But I do not see this imagery at all being as such. It was not even the attitude towards his two nurses that did that - replace the two with a male or female Hiro would have been at his core still an ass. I wouldn't go to that far of an extreme to say that the premise can be classified as misogynistic (a term now bandwagon on major internet socials). It wasn't treating women for the sake of treating women bad. Both Hiro and Asakura in their respective scenes treated everyone equally like jerks or asses.

I don't agree it was that bad of a writing. I do agree how flandarized the characterization has become, that Hiro is painted even more blander with basic intent. I mean in that flash back how did he come to protecting the lives of others for them to pursue their dreams in his place? I may have missed that - and if I did, that is how strong of a writing that has imparted in return.

Well, I may as well start with the good: I haven’t seen Ryuki, but if they wanted a psychopath, Hagino absolutely sold it. As well, I liked the soundtrack. Finally, there weren't any awkward tone shifts. That said, there’s a lot of violence that I just wouldn’t expect on the main show--and watching the shower attack two days after watching Psycho didn’t help. Since when did KR take entire sequences from literal slasher movies?

Speaking of which: lady, get something better than a towel on. Overall, I feel like this goes under the category of very confused, practically worst-case-scenario adult-oriented KR; whereas “proper” dark tokusatsu (e.g. Nexus) rely mainly on dark storylines, emotional tragedy, and messing with heroes’ minds, this special’s idea of dark seems to be pushing the violence/fanservice as far as it can go without diving into Amazons/Garo territory (the fact that it doesn't reach the level of those shows is the only reason I said "practically" worst-case). The special is certainly dark, but the darkness is pretty skin-deep compared to other dark toku. There isn't any intellectual darkness here, just violence/towel lady because violence/towel lady. I don't mind some occasional horror inspiration for KR, but it has to be kept to a limit.

It's really a shame, since I was looking forward to this special. Hiiro in the show felt like more of an interesting character than Emu, a classic villain here was brought back, and it looked like this was going to be genuinely dark. In fact, there's a lot that I can admire for what it was going for: an attempted message of "Even if someone's a jerk, they can still have a heart hidden within them," a return of a previous villain, and some great fight sequences. But sometimes, it seems, "they tried" doesn't completely cut it. Before this special I was really wishing for a return to a dark KR show, but if TOEI's idea of dark means smushing heroes' faces in glass shards and fanservicey shower attacks taken from slasher films, I think I'll be fine with Ex-Aid's current state. At least when Ex-Aid is dark, it's dark for a reason.

Kamen Rider Brave (as in you'll have to be Brave and maybe a little foolhardy to get through watching this): Review Level 2. *Gacchan!*

I've decided to write a second review for this after another day, possibly because the special had enough wrong with it that it deserves more than can fit in one post. In all honesty, from the general anticipation for Ouja's return, I'd heard that he was *the* evil Rider; the one that no one could surpass in being extremely evil. In this sense, I cannot say I was disappointed by him--Ouja was indeed really, really evil--despite the fact that it turns out that this is not the same Ouja everyone remembers. As I wrote earlier, there's nothing intellectual here behind his displays of violence, just "Wow, that's a really evil dude." While I have to confess that the violence was enough to keep me involved while I was watching it, in retrospect it was both awful and really pretty pointless. If I had to shorten this review down to one word, it'd likely be "Why?"

TOEI appear to have noticed the question in advance of whether the special would seem sexist or misogynistic, so they seem to have answered that by having one nurse spend around a third (?) of the movie running and hiding outside in a towel. I know this is Japan, so complaining about fanservice would normally seem somewhat naive of me, but here it feels like, quite frankly, a mess even by their standards. If there were a guy running around dressed in a towel outside for a sizable portion of a video, that's what I'd call comic relief. (By the way, does anyone even remember why they went after the second nurse in the first place? I honestly don't remember there being a reason.)

Ultimately, in a way this reminds me of some of my childhood writing. Over a decade ago, one sibling and I had our own superhero "show" with typical flat characters and constantly aggravated villains who would never catch them. One night, we realized that something wasn't right: since the show was so comedic, there was nothing to keep any adult audience interested. To solve this, we created a special episode: the story of the Heart Monster. The eponymous mess was a collection of hearts that would rip hearts out of people and attach them to itself to grow in size. The pair of heroes eventually beat it, but not before the monster tore off one hero's arm and ripped off the other's elephant trunk thing (this was, it is necessary to remember, around a decade ago).

A decade or so later, after having rebooted our superhero story for the umpteenth time with drama a little more convincing than our earlier attempt, I was delighted to see that a darker-looking Kamen Rider special was released. I jumped to it, and... there was violence. Lots of violence. People's faces get dragged across broken glass. Someone repeatedly strikes an unarmed woman with a metal rod. A guy eats a definitively raw fish, complete with sound effects.

Wanting to be more adult-friendly, the special's way of achieving this was to make the special as non child-friendly as possible. In short: Kamen Rider Brave is, in its own right, a Heart Monster edition for Ex-Aid.

"Hurting people without thought or intention... this special was no better than a pathogen."
--Slightly Abridged Hiiro Kagami

Awesome review man. We need more thoughtful long-form reviews like this on the site.

I definitely wonder at times "Is this sexist or am I being too sensitive?" And given the subservient nature of the women, the bath towel scene, the innate vulnerability compared to Emu who at least had some agency, I kind of feel like it's fair to call this a sexist piece of work. Yeah, it makes me feel uncomfortable, but even when I step back and analyze it from a more intellectual point of view, the problems still stand, so it's not just my knee-jerk reaction to the matter. People can say the violence happens to both men and women, but I'd say that's a false equivalency.

And it's pretty hard to tell who Toei is aiming this special for. It seems too mature for children. Too empty on a character and plot level to appeal to adults. It really just seems like the first thing they farted out. Slap a label on it and ship it, because we can't be arsed to come up with something better. I feel sorry for anyone who paid money for this. It's more an insult to the fans than a reward.